Team @ Peloton
My Truth is Our Power: The Making of Peloton's 2021 Pride Campaign

When it comes to authentically living our commitment to inclusion, we believe it’s important to offer more than just a “seat at the table.” We aim to involve a diverse set of individuals from all communities into the creation of our content, apparel design, campaigns and more. Our Community not only shapes our work, but is built and focused around the individuality of our employees and Members across the world.
And our 2021 Pride campaign, “My Truth is Our Power'', did just that. This campaign was conceived, shaped, and created by Peloton’s LGBTQ+ community -- for Peloton’s LGBTQ+ community -- to reflect and celebrate its diversity of identities and voices. We celebrated our community through themed classes, apparel collections, and donated a total of $100,000 to four global organizations.
Colin Burke (he/him), Associate Brand Manager of Social Impact + Cultural Marketing led the 2021 campaign from its earliest stages. He had his eye on the Pride campaign since he started in June 2019. “I remember when I first started [at Peloton] and the Pride campaign was happening, and it made me very excited to work [here],” he says. “But I was also like, I want to be a part of that. I want to work on that in whatever way. And here I am, two years later, and I'm leading it. It feels really good.”
He brought a vision for pushing the boundaries of future campaigns. “I think we can tell more stories, and...I think every single year our campaigns have gotten better and more representative and more inclusive.”
Peloton's value of "Empowering Teams of Smart Creatives" creates an environment where everyone’s ideas are welcome. “It’s a place where you can stop a meeting and say, ‘Hey, why are we doing this? Or, ‘Why have we been doing this the way we've been doing it?’ As long as you say it in the right way, I think people welcome that type of questioning because it makes the work better.”

The 2021 Peloton Pride campaign was almost a year in the making. The team started working on the 2021 campaign shortly after Pride 2020 came to a close. The early stages focused on campaign messaging and design concepts for apparel.
Alanna Jones (she/her), U.K. Copywriter, wrote the campaign’s message — “My Truth is Our Power” — and the team was immediately sold. “She came up with that pretty early on and we were all just like, yes, nailed it, use it,” says Catherine Lewandowski (she/her), Senior Designer and three-year veteran of the Pride campaign, and created the visual identity for 2021. “We really just built everything around that and I think it came out really beautifully.”
Lewandowski says that being part of the Creative team was a meaningful experience. “Being part of a campaign and part of a company that can show up really authentically for Pride and put together something really beautiful is super important, so I was really glad to be a part of it because of that.”
The campaign was designed to reflect and empower the larger Peloton Community, and includes both employees and Peloton Members in final creative. “We want this moment to reflect not just our Instructors, but our entire Community,” says Burke. “If we were going to show Peloton pride in the truest most authentic way possible,” Lewandowski says, “we really had to show everyone that makes up our community.”
Jackie Helfgott (she/her), Lead Video Editor, worked with Paul Hamann (he/him) and Anthony Esquivel (he/him) to conceptualize the video and highlight the community in an authentic way. “The community represents so many different people,” says Helfgott. “We all have our own truth. We all have our own journey. We all come from different cultures and different backgrounds, and it is meaningful.”

Pride at Peloton
But this moment of unity among the Peloton community isn’t an isolated one, Lewandowski says. “Pride exists all the time at Peloton. The community exists all the time and that makes it feel much more comfortable in these big moments.”
Helfgott says the Peloton Community “lives and breathes” a celebration of inclusion. “It’s my job to highlight this campaign and our LGBTQ+ Instructors, Members, and employees. It means that the company feels invested in me, and that goes both ways.”
Mariela Peguero (she/her), Senior Operations Coordinator, and one of the stars of the campaign, says being comfortable with her identity has been a foundational part of her time at Peloton. “This is the first time in my career where I’ve been able to truly show up by myself. It started on the day I interviewed, and then it kept going.”
When the working environment is a truly inclusive one, you can count on your team to show up for you.
Coming together to go far
For many who worked on the campaign, the video shoot was the first time in over a year they’d seen their teammates in person (though some joined the shoot remotely that day). Burke says that coming together for the first time in so long, and after such isolation, was a truly special experience. “I just got to honestly sit back and watch... people dance and come alive,” he says.
Peguero says she felt like a star during the video shoot, and kept reminding the crew that she works for Peloton. Still, the support and celebration kept coming. “If I needed water or if I was sweating or if my hair was out of place, someone was there to help. I'm a doer and I'm a helper. And so to have someone doing all those things for you—that was fun.”
Ashni Mehta (she/her), Senior Product Manager, Developer Experience, and another face of the campaign, says the video shoot experience was like a party. “The energy everyone brought in was just so upbeat and ready, and it was such a celebration.”
The words they speak in the video are also their own, Mehta says. “Folks were always working with us to come up with words instead of giving us words to say. That meant that a lot of what we said was our own authentic voice and how we felt about things. There were moments where we would riff on a particular prompt and we would come up with a bunch of different responses and then folks would pick and choose what sounded right. So much of that agency was given to us, so there is a lot of authenticity.”

Finding deeper meaning in the campaign
Participating in “My Truth is Our Power” meant more to the team than just beautiful creative or a day of feeling like a celebrity—it was a way of showing pride in their identities, in the identities of everyone in the Peloton universe.
“By showing up, I'm empowering or giving hope to someone who may be in darkness,” says Peguero. “You know, I too was in darkness at one point and now, I'm in light. So I think by showing up, by getting out of my comfort zone and by sharing what my truth is, I am empowering others that are part of my community. I love that.”
“It's about a community. It's about us all,” Burke says. “Sometimes we get so caught up in the community and we actually lose that this is an individual experience. Pride starts with you. If you can’t take pride in yourself, that means you can’t move forward. So by one person standing in their truth and saying, I am trans, I am gay, lesbian—whatever is that you are—that's power for the entire community.”
To support the safety, mental health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities, we’re donating a total of $100,000 to four global organizations. These organizations protect and foster the journeys of individuals in LGBTQ+ communities across the world, and we’re proud to partner with them in their mission. Read more on our blog here.